Installation Notes

Install Update within Cluster

Please read the following release notes carefully, before continuing. When installing this update on a Collax V-Cube+ cluster the following steps have to be performed:

/ Important information

Please have a look at the Collax V-Cube 6.8.22 Release Notes if the nodes have Version 6.8.20 or above and haven’t been updated yet. For this update, it is necessary that both nodes are set in maintenance mode simultaneously.

Procedure

1. Click at High Availability within the Dashboard.
2. Select the other (not the local) V-Cube+ node and change into the Start Maintenance dialog.
3. Now, put this other node into maintenance mode by confirming the query in the dialog. Wait until the maintenance mode is reached. Depending on the number of virtual machines and hard disk, this can take some time. Virtual machines will be migrated live, which can take a few minutes depending on the size of the RAM. The progress will be displayed in the list of background activities.
4. Close the dialog.
5. In the list of nodes, select again the other node whose software is to be updated by right-clicking it.
6. Change to System Update ….
7. Click Check for Updates. The completion will be displayed as “100%”.
8. Click Download and Install. This function will download the latest software packages from the update server and install them. The completion will be displayed as Install - 100%.
9. Close the dialog and set the node to active.
10. Please repeat this procedure for the local node.

Install Update

Please read the following release notes carefully, before continuing. When installing this update on a Collax V-Cube+ cluster the following steps have to be performed:

/ Important information

For this update, it is necessary that both nodes are set in maintenance mode simultaneously.

Note that when using multiple drives within a virtual machine, they can be viewed as “offline” in Disk Management because of a Windows policy. By clicking Online, the volume can be reactivated.

Procedure

1. Please shut down all virtual machines within the cluster management gui before continuing with the following steps. Please consider hat virtual machines, beeing hibernated will loose its hybernate files.
2. For this update it’s necessary to put bote nodes into maintenance mode simultaneously.
3. Click at High Availability within the Dashboard.
4. Choose one V-Cube+ node after another and change into the Start Maintenance dialog.
5. Now, put both nodes into maintenance mode by confirming the query in the dialog. Wait until the maintenance mode is reached. The progress will be displayed in the list of background activities.
6. Close the dialog.
7. In the list of nodes, select the node whose software is to be updated by right-clicking it.
8. Wechseln Sie in den Dialog System Update ….
9. Click Check for Updates. The completion will be displayed as “100%”.
10. Click Download and Install. This function will download the latest software packages from the update server and install them. The completion will be displayed as Install - 100%.
11. A new kernel is going to be installed. The node will automatically be rebooted two minutes after the installation of the system update. This will be indicated upon completion of the update procedure. Wait for the node to reboot.
12. Please repeat this procedure on the next node that needs to be updated.
13. If all nodes within the cluster are updated and active the virtual machines can be started again.

New in this Version

Virtualization: Number of virtual network interfaces

Inside the configuration of the virtual machine, the number of virtual network interface cards that the virtual machine is permitted to use is raised.

Virtualization: Number of virtual drives

Inside the configuration of the virtual machine, the number of virtual drives that the virtual machine is permitted to use is raised.

Virtualization: Emulation USB keyboard

The dialogue is located under the extended settings of the virtual machine. If this option is set, in addition to a PS2 keyboard a USB keyboard will be emulated. If a VM does not respond to keystrokes, you may need to enable the virtual USB keyboard.

V-Cube+: Support for CyberPower fencing devices

This release supports Power Distribution Units (PDUs) from CyberPower.

V-Cube+: Memory Management during Backup of VM

When backing up virtual machines, a snapshot of the base images is beeing created as well as the RAM-state is beeing saved. When the RAM-state changed too fast, it lead to an error in the backup process and the backup was interrupted. With this release the behaviour is improved, resulting in better system performance.

V-Cube+: Proactive HA: Adjusted evacuated state

The fencing mechanism ensures that all VMs remain available even after a spontaneous hardware failure. Some hardware failures, however, are predictable. With Proactive HA, permanent checks of the hardware components are performed. All errors are monitored which indicates an imminent hardware failure. If such an error is detected, the node is evacuated. This means that all VMs will be moved to the other node in a timely, uninterrupted manner by live migration. With this release will be the behavior and the message adjusted and improved if the other node is not available and the first active node would have to be evacuated.

GUI: Extended desciption field in Wizard for virtual machines

The wizard assists you in setting up a virtual machine. The “comment” field for VMs is beeing extended within this release to a multi-line input field and the complete description can be shown in the tooltip.

GUI: HTML5 - RDP Access to VM Consoles

This update has replaced the Java Viewer with HTML5 in the virtual machine management dialog. By clicking on the icon in this column, the screen console of the corresponding virtual machine is opened in a separate browser tab. In addition, a pop-up displays how the virtual machine screen can be accesse with a VNC software client or with a Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP) connection.

System Management: Important System Components

The following important system components will be installed with this update.

• drbd 8.4.11-1
• kernel 4.9.102

Issues Fixed in this Version

Security: Remote Login Program OpenSSH

In the source code of OpenSSH security holes have been discovered. These holes will be closed within this software update to OpenSSH 7.7p1

See OpenSSH Release 7.7

Security: Meltdown and Spectre

Security researchers have discovered massive security holes in processors that were developed by security experts. These holes were published under the name Meltdown and Spectre. This update installs a kernel in version 4.9.102 and protecs against Meltdown, Spectre Variant 1, Variant2, Variant 3, Variant 3a und Variant 4.

Security: Microcode update

To protect against Specter V2, it is necessary to perform an update of the microcode. With this update, this happens automatically, without having to update the BIOS. Also see here :

Security: Internet Domain Name Server Bind

In the source code of the internet domain name server BIND security holes have been discovered. These holes will be closed within this Collax software update to bind 9.9.11-P1

Assigned Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures (CVE) number: CVE-2017-3145

Security: Cryptography Toolkit OpenSSL

In the source code of the cryptography toolkit OpenSSL 1.0.2o security holes have been discovered. These holes will be closed within this Collax software update.

Assigned Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures (CVE) numbers:

CVE-2018-0739 CVE-2017-3737 CVE-2017-3738 CVE-2017-3736 CVE-2017-3735

V-Cube+: Race condition when using a non certified software component

The use of non-Collax certified software component Docusnap on a customers Cluster causes the scripts called in this case to have extremely long entries in the process list. This in turn could lead to the stonith of a node in the worst case, since the Cluster resource agent, responsible for controlling the cluster resources, is not working properly. This situation can no longer occur with this update.

Please note that when using non-certified 3rd party software on our products, is could happen that the HA functionality is not guaranteed. This can cause failures or at worst lead to data loss. If you have additional software on Collax V servers, please contact Collax Support in advance.

V-Cube+: Blocked eSAN hard disk replication

Due to a code change within the software component DRBD, which is responsible for synchronization the virtual disks, under rare circumstances it could lead to problems on systems with a large number of virtual disks. The replication of a single virtual disk might no longer start automatically and a manual intervention was needed. With this update, the replication of all virtual hard disks works reliable at any time.

System Management: Dollarsign in Display-Password

For security reasons, the VM screen is accessed only after entering a specified password. Due to an error in the program code, you could not connect to the display console if the password contained a dollar sign. This is fixed with this update.

Notes

V-Cube+: Online Snapshots and backups

You can create an online snapshot or an offline snapshot. Apart from creating a separate snapshot disk, an online snapshot stores the current memory state of the machine during operation. You should commit all snapshots before updating to Collax V-Cube+ 6.8.8. Existing online snapshots can be started after the update but their current memeory state will be lost. Same for backups depending on online snapshots.

V-Cube+: Restore virtual harddiscs

From Collax V-Bien version 6.8.15 on the internal path for virtual harddiscs changes and a restore from previous backups isn’t possible anymore without manual intervention. In case of a baremetal resore please use the previous verion or don’t hesitate to contact support.

System Management: Monitoring Media Erros on LSI Controllers

Within update Collax V-Bien 6.5.22 the active monitoring of media errors on LSI RAID-Controllers has been customized. Up to now a warning information for hard disks with a single media error has been issued, although the controller was able to handle those errors and correct them automatically. From now on the warning threshold is 100 errors.

Misc: Windows Setup notes Error Message 0x80300001

If Windows Server 2008 R2 and above is to be installed on Virtio hard disks using the Virtio driver CD for Windows, Windows reports the error code 0x80300001. The error message occurs if the partitions are recognized and the user clicks the button Next. The message means, that the installation CD of Windows needs to be inserted again.

Misc: Install Collax-Server from template

When installing a Collax Server from a template only Collax Servers from version 7.x and later are supported. The installation of version 5.x is no longer supported.